This exhibition includes the work of seven Creative PhD graduate students in Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas who are writing dissertations informed by documentary photographic practice. They often embrace personal perspectives while connecting to concerns that involve geography and sense of place, cultural rituals and celebrations, imagined and real borders, experiences informed by race, gender and class, and concepts of identity. These artists use the camera to create records of contemporary life, records informed by their research, to add to our collective archive of shared histories.

curated by Marilyn Waligore

January 25 - March 2, 2013

Diane Durant revisits the American Road Story through postmodern fiction and photography--using image, text, and object-- to connect back to the our concept of the American Dream. Lupita Murillo Tinnen presents the American Dream in a contemporary context, through her reflection on the Dream Act and her aim to give a voice to undocumented college students in North Texas. Lilly Albritton documents popular devotion of the Virgen de Guadalupe, rituals occurring within communities across the Southwestern United States, to preserve this evolving practice. Charley Bevill's Family Album (re)creates an intimate portrait of family, snapshots in time, while it also intertwines with larger sociopolitical and feminist issues through her connections to the history of the Harlem Renaissance. Cynthia Miller links her experience of parenthood with that of mothers who also document their personal lives. Miller turns her camera from a focus on the exterior world to the domestic, interior one involving her children and daily activities. June Owens documents rural families, reflecting on the relationship between our own economic conditions and those of the Depression era, creating a new historical record comprised of images and verbal accounts of Texas farmers. Giraud Polite's sculptural work explores the photograph as a sacred and reproducible object and closely examines the relationship between the photographic narrative and the utilization of symbols. His research explores the musical soundscape of Louisiana; he combines the experience of sound and image to reference the history of place.